Posted on 10/10/2005 10:19:10 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Durban - BLACK South Africans have begun a series of “symbolic” property invasions with the aim of pressing the government to speed the transfer of white-owned farms to them. Supporters of the South African Communist party yesterday took over unused municipal land outside Brits, a town in North West province.
The Communists, who are in government with President Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress, have called for similar demonstrations across the country to force the state to redistribute property to poor blacks.
The government has accused white farmers of delaying land reform by demanding exorbitant prices for their property. But, worried that they could be driven from their homes like their counterparts in Zimbabwe, white farmers have vowed to fight for their rights.
“It’s like a war out here,” said Gideon Meiring, who farms cattle and grain near the Zimbabwean border. “But no way will we allow a second Zimbabwe to happen in South Africa.”
Meiring is an official with the powerful Transvaal Agricultural Union, which represents many of the country’s 40,000 white farmers. Over the past 10 years hundreds have been murdered, and many others are struggling to stay in business since strict labour laws and higher land taxes were introduced.
Reform is slow. Only 3% of land has been redistributed compared to a goal of 30% by 2014. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the deputy president, has said the government is considering more active intervention. “We want to avoid the problems that have occurred in Zimbabwe — that 20 years after liberation, land redistribution remained incomplete,” she said.
Ping
Property is worth fighting for ~ Bump!
SOUTH AFRICA: a once prosperous land, now suffering from severe famine and plague. Pleads for world donations to feed the starving.
"Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the deputy president, has said the government is considering more active intervention. 'We want to avoid the problems that have occurred in Zimbabwe — that 20 years after liberation, land redistribution remained incomplete,' she said."
Phumzile is as stupid and/or corrupt as her counterpart in Zimbabwe. She only sees the Zimbabwean problems to be avoided as the delay in Marxist land redistribution. Apparently she doesn't view the mass starvation facing Zimbabwe as a problem.
Go ahead, Phumzile, follow the Zimbabwe model, kick the white farmers out. Then proceed to eat dirt.
That's the idea. Poor/starving people are easier to control. The ruling elite never go hungry.
“We want to avoid the problems that have occurred in Zimbabwe — that 20 years after liberation, land redistribution remained incomplete,” she said.
That land reform was "too slow" is the problem in Zimbabwe? Gee, I thought the problem was that because the farms were forcefully confiscated from people who actually knew how to farm and given to clueless thugs, the people in Zimbabwe were starving. Communists will never grasp the concept that things work best when the means of production belong to people who can actually produce.
Maybe if land reform in Zimbabwe had been faster everyone would have starved to death decades ago.
Me, too. The jokers in the deck are the Zulu. I have been wondering why there hasn't been a three-way civil war in SA - one between disaffected white South Africans, the ruling ANC, and the Zulu. The latter are no allies in a strict sense. In fact, it may be because the Zulu have a loose coalition in SA government. They certainly rule their own part of SA with a minimum of interference from the ANC government.
IFP MARCH AGAINST POLITICAL VIOLENCE
March 1, 2005
"The IFP [Inkatha Freedom Party] in the Zululand District and in the surrounding areas is staging a protest march on Friday 4 March 2005 against the recent spate of killings of IFP leaders in KwaZulu-Natal.
The procession is scheduled to start at 9:00 from the Legislative Assembly complex in Ulundi. The march will proceed towards the offices of the local Regional Commissioner of the SAPS, where a protest memorandum will be handed over to the Regional Commissioner.
According to its IFP Zululand District organisers, the protest march is an expression of people’s exasperation with continuing political violence, namely the recent assassinations of IFP leaders, in the area and in the province at large.
Senior IFP leaders are expected. The neighbouring communities affected by political violence are welcome to participate in the march."
-
Inkatha Freedom Party
"The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP, also Inkatha) is a Zulu-based political party, based in its ethnic stronghold, KwaZulu-Natal. It is the ANC's main rival in the black community. Between 1970 and 1990, Inkatha portrayed itself as a moderate and democratic organization, contrasting its views with extremist positions within the ANC. But in the early 1990s, the IFP became increasingly intransigent in its efforts to preserve its traditional power base in KwaZulu, while the rest of the country was moving closer to nonracial democracy under the now moderate NP and ANC leadership.
Inkatha was originally established in 1922 as a cultural movement to promote the Zulu heritage. It was rejuvenated in 1928 by the Zulu king, Solomon ka Dinuzulu, as Inkatha ya kwa Zulu (Organization of the Zulu). During this phase, controversy arose over the party's activities. For example, critics claimed that funds collected from Natal's impoverished black population were misused to pay for King Solomon's lavish life-style. Others suggested that the organization's 1928 constitution, written by a white lawyer from Durban at the urging of white businessmen in Natal, was intended to ensure that the party would express the interests of the traditional tribal elites, the conservative black petite bourgeoisie, and a few white power brokers. After a period of relative inactivity, and following an unsuccessful attempt to revive it in 1959, Inkatha ya kwa Zulu was reestablished as a political organization in March 1975 by KwaZulu's chief minister, Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi. Buthelezi renamed the organization Inkatha Yenkululeko Yesizwe (National Cultural Liberation Movement). In August 1990, following the unbanning of antiapartheid organizations, Inkatha proclaimed itself a political party, the IFP, with membership open to all races.
From its primarily Zulu political base, Inkatha has played an important role in national politics. In 1977 it was the largest legal black movement in the country, having an estimated 120,000 members; by the late 1980s, its leaders estimated their membership at 1.5 million (considered highly inflated by the inclusion of the party's 600,000-member Youth Brigade and 500,000-member Women's Brigade). It has never managed to recruit many members outside the Zulu community, however.
The IFP in the 1990s is a tightly knit and authoritarian organization, dominated by Buthelezi. Its political structure consists of local branches organized into regions and provinces. The IFP's four provincial councils are led by the IFP National Council. Provincial delegates elect representatives to the annual general conference, where delegates to the National Council are elected each year. The IFP's power base is rooted in three sources--the former KwaZulu homeland bureaucracy, which the party controlled by virtue of its dominance over the local legislature and provincial government; the Zulu traditional leaders--i.e., chiefs and headmen; and the Zulu population, including the inhabitants of large squatter settlements near several cities, especially Johannesburg and Durban.
Although Inkatha and the ANC had close ties in the early 1970s, their relationship deteriorated after that. Inkatha became especially threatened by ANC organizing efforts among educated and urban Zulus. The ANC criticized Buthelezi for becoming the leader of the KwaZulu homeland, and thereby accepting the government's demographic manipulation for apartheid purposes. The ANC pressed for a more militant antiapartheid campaign and waged a propaganda war against Buthelezi, demonizing him as a "stooge" of apartheid. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this rivalry degenerated into violent conflict, spilling over into townships and rural areas, and claiming the lives of thousands of black South Africans.
Some Western observers and South African political leaders hoped that the IFP, rooted in Zulu tradition and Western in its outlook in support of a federalist democracy and free enterprise, would attract moderate South African blacks to its ranks. That prospect dimmed in the climate of escalating violence leading up to the 1994 elections. Buthelezi protested against his being sidelined by what he considered "ANC-NP collusion" in the negotiating process, and in early 1994 he announced that the IFP would boycott the country's first free elections.
The IFP ultimately participated in the elections, after the ANC and the NP agreed to consider international mediation on the issue of provincial autonomy and agreed to reinforce the status of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini and the Zulu homeland. The party's late entry cost it popular support at the polls, however. The IFP managed to win barely one-half of the vote in Natal and only 10.5 percent of the nationwide vote, with most of its support in KwaZulu and the area around Johannesburg.
The IFP's commitment to Zulu autonomy remained strong after the elections. In May 1994, at a caucus of the KwaZulu legislative assembly, Inkatha formed a new society called Iso Lesizwe, or Eye of the Nation, with Chief Buthelezi as its president. The new organization dedicated itself to pursuing Zulu autonomy "within the parameters of democratic and pluralistic forms of government and along with all the other peoples living in the ancestral territory of the Zulu nation." Debate over this issue intensified in 1995 and 1996."
The whites in South Africa are approaching the point where they will have to decide to flee with whatever they can get out of the country or to fight to try and take back the country. Either way, they need to decide while they still have the option.
There has been a low-level civil war between the Xhosas (mainly ANC) and Zulus (IFP) for many years. There are a couple of reasons that it has not escalated more. The now fired vice president, Jacob Zuma is a Zulu. Now that there is no longer a Zulu in the upper parts of government, Zulus may feel more threatened, and violence between the groups may escalate. Also, the Zulu king has been urging restraint from the Zulu people, but their patience may also run out soon, especially since a couple of memebers of the Zulu royal family has been killed recently.
It would be interesting to see whose side the Zulus take if conflict levels rise between the whites and ANC government. Whichever way, the whites are mostly disarmed and poorly organized, so it will be hard for them to resist for a sustained period of time and not get butchered.
That name is a road-side sobriety test all by itself. Spelling it or pronouncing it.
Some of the Whites there still have the recipe for nukes that were destroyed before they turned power over to the Blacks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.